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Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader spoke to an enthusiastic crowd of several hundred at the Orpheum Theater in Madison on Friday night about why he is again campaigning for the office, about the need for election reform and why he and his running mate, Matt Gonzalez, should be allowed into the presidential debates.

Nader spoke about what he called the "corporate government in Washington shutting the doors on the ability of the American people to go to Washington and improve their country," which he said has led to a "gap between knowledge and action" in the United States. He cited his desire to fight those interests as his primary reason for running.

Nader spent much of his hourlong speech railing against corporate influence on national policy, pointing to the fact that since World War II much of Western Europe has rebuilt itself while still managing to put into place single payer health-care systems, pollution controls and policies favoring workers' rights, while in America such policies have been minimally implemented.

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"How many more years are we going to give the Republican and Democratic parties ... to clean up their own act?" he said.

Nader also addressed a criticism he has received from many Democrats since the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections: that his place on the ballot in many states tipped the scales in favor of George W. Bush, taking votes away from the Democratic nominees.

"There's no such thing as taking votes away," he said. "It's up to the voters to decide who they're going to vote for. I think McCain is going to take votes away from Obama and Obama is going to take votes away from McCain."

"People say, We don't want to throw away our vote. We want to vote for winners,' " he said. "OK, go ahead. You've been voting for winners, and you've been losing."

In that vein, Gonzalez. who was also at the Orpheum, called for election reform that would require elections to be won by a simple majority of the popular vote and allow voters to rank candidates in order of preference.

He said such a system would allow voters to vote for the candidates they really wanted without worrying that their votes would be "wasted."

Nader and Gonzalez saved some of their harshest attacks for the Democrats in Congress.

Nader jabbed Democratic nominee Barack Obama for "flip-flopping" toward the center of the political spectrum, calling such moves a "losing strategy" that didn't work for Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis or John Kerry before him. He attacked the Democratic Party for not talking about the poor in the United States and choosing instead to focus on the middle class.

Saying there has been "a lack of urgency" about the Iraq war, Gonzalez said that since Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House of Representatives, the amount of money allocated to the war has gone up, despite her promises to end the war. Nader said he plans to institute a "negotiated six-month withdrawal" from Iraq if elected president.

Both also spoke of allowing outside candidates into the "closed-door system" of national political debates, urging their supporters to demand that from their elected officials and the national media.

"If we could only get in the debates, it would be a three-way race," Nader said.

Nader said that even if he never has a realistic shot at the presidency, allowing him into the debates would get the candidates to talk about more subjects that are important to the poor and working class.